Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / August 22-23, 2013

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday:

84  Lihue, Kauai
88  Honolulu, Oahu
84  Molokai
90  Kahului, Maui
85  Kona, Hawaii
84  Hilo, Hawaii

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops on Maui and the Big Island…as of 810pm Thursday evening:

Kailua Kona – 81
Hana airport, Maui – 77

Haleakala Summit –   50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 39 (13,000+ feet on the Big Island)

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. This web cam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset too… depending upon weather conditions. Here’s the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui – if it’s working.

Aloha Paragraphs

Strengthening trade winds…into the weekend and beyond

A few windward showers, although limited into the
weekend…dry leeward beaches

The following numbers represent the most recent top wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Thursday evening:

13  Port Allen, Kauai – SE
20  Kahuku Trng, Oahu – SE
23  Molokai – ENE
24   Lanai – NE
29  Kahoolawe – ENE
22  Kapalua, Maui – NE
22  Upolu airport, Big Island – NE

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Thursday evening:

1.44  Anahola, Kauai
0.01  Schofield Barracks, Oahu
0.00  Molokai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Maui
0.36  Glenwood, Big Island

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean. Here’s the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image… and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands.

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

The trade winds will increase in speed Friday…into the weekend and beyond. Here’s a weather chart showing a couple of near 1022 millibar high pressure systems located to the northeast of the islands. There’s also a weak low pressure system to the south-southeast of the Big Island. Our local winds will become stronger and gusty…as we move into the weekend. I expect to see small craft wind advisory flags going up over those windiest coasts and channels around Maui County and the Big Island…later Friday or Saturday.

Favorable summer weather conditions prevail, with a few windward showers at night...although quite limited in general.  Satellite imagery shows just a few scattered low cloud patches over the ocean upstream of the islands  The leeward sides will be mostly clear to partly cloudy with seasonably warm to very warm daytime temperatures. The windward sides will see lots of sunshine, with only a few showers at night locally. Here’s the looping radar image, showing just a few showers falling over the nearby ocean…and along our windward sides of the central islands at the time of this writing. ~~~ I’ll be back early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Thursday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

World-wide tropical cyclone activity:

Atlantic Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

Here’s a satellite image showing this area under investigation

Interesting: Pesticide Problems in the Amazon – As the world’s population increases and agricultural frontiers expand into native tropical habitats, researchers are working furiously to understand the impacts on tropical forests and global biodiversity. But one obvious impact has been little studied in these agricultural frontiers: pesticides. However a new study in the journal Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B seeks to shine a light on the problem.

Intensive land modification in many parts of the Brazilian Amazon is exposing large numbers of species to pesticides with unknown impacts, according to Luis Schiesari of the University of São Paulo, Brazil and his team of researchers.

“Pesticides are products deliberately designed to reduce organismal growth, development, reproduction and survival and as such have a potentially broad range of lethal and sublethal effects of concern,” Schiesari told mongabay.com.

Tropical forests regions like the Amazon not only have more species to be lost in absolute terms, but also contain relatively more sensitive, vulnerable and endemic species that are likely threatened by both pesticide use and agricultural land expansion.

The overuse of pesticides is predominately, but not solely, attributed to small produce farmers whose primary income is based on total production and quality of agricultural yields, according to the researchers. In contrast larger, corporate farms are under the public eye and more likely to obey regulations set by governmental organizations.

Overuse of pesticides could very well be a product of limited, or poor, levels of education in regard to the chemicals.

“I believe that any education, technical support, or transfer of technology that would help smallholders increase production, increase income, minimize losses, and protect health would be welcome,” Schiesari said. “Appropriate pesticide use could contribute to any of these topics, and is one of the most technically challenging land management practices: for example, soy beans alone are responsible for 400 pesticide formulations containing 137 active ingredients in Brazil. Deciding which of them to use, when, how, and how much is a considerable technical challenge.”

Schiesari and his team also argue that where governmental reach and control are limited, market pressure can be directly or indirectly important in biodiversity conservation. However, this can be deceiving. For instance, when analyzing a large-scale soya plantation where governmental regulations are high, there was a gradual decreasing trend in total toxicity of mammals and humans and an increasing trend of toxicity in freshwater aquatic species.